Rudd applauded by local councils for ditching fixed carbon price

ELEANOR HALL: The fixed carbon price has been a burden for some local councils that have significant landfill sites.

When the Prime Minister heads to Rockhampton for his Government's community cabinet later today, he'll meet some of the locals in the marginal electorate of Capricornia.

One of them is Rockhampton Mayor Margaret Strelow, who has been speaking to political reporter Anna Henderson.

MARGARET STRELOW: Our landfill is one that gets caught by the carbon tax, so we had to write out a cheque to Kevin for about $800,000 - that's just directly out of our budget, and the indirect costs are estimated to be about $2.5 million.

So bringing forward the point at which that carbon tax reflects world prices certainly changes the dynamics of our budget, and we'd love to see that.

ANNA HENDERSON: And have you had to significantly change the way the council operates? Will there be a transitional cost again to go to the ETS early?

MARGARET STRELOW: Look, no, not for us. We have been adding dollars as the landfill collects rubbish, so there's been an extra levy imposed on people to cover the cost. It would be a fairly easy thing to drop the price back at the landfill and get that $800,000 back in the pockets of our community where it needs to be.

ANNA HENDERSON: How important do you think it was for the federal Government to give an undertaking that it would hold a referendum on constitutional recognition of local government alongside this year's poll?

MARGARET STRELOW: I think that's one that a lot of the community find difficult to understand. There was a recent court case that put a big question mark over the federal Government's ability to give money directly to the councils because, according to the Constitution we don't exist, and there has been a case made that all money should go via the state governments before it comes to us.

Now look, we love our state government dearly, but when money goes through them before it gets to us, it's a bit like putting things into a colander. It doesn't always all come back out.

And so we really do want to see that capacity to give directly to local government.

It's a hard one to explain to the community, and I think people are naturally suspicious of any change to the constitution and so they should be, but I think this one is harmless and comes from the right place.

ANNA HENDERSON: Do you think at this stage of the political debate on this issue, it's still possible that a referendum could be a success?

MARGARET STRELOW: Look, I guess I leave that in the hands of our local government associations. They're the ones who have got their finger on the pulse of the politics. They're telling us to hang in there, to man the booths, and to go for it so that's what we will be doing. It doesn't come without its problems, but I guess since we've got this far and there's been a lot of effort and energy invested to get us to the point where we did have at least initially that support to get it on the agenda and it is an important issue for our community.